The data available to individuals and institutions that monitor the global financial markets is wide-ranging. Investment professionals who may be responsible for monitoring a particular company or industry sector may receive thousands of individual information items each day. Some of these information items may be presented in well-formatted and categorized formats from reliable and well-known sources such as financial statements filed with a stock exchange or the Securities and Exchange Commission, whereas other information items may be in the form of informal correspondence such as email or instant message, phone conversations, or face to face meetings. Furthermore, the application of numerous internet communications technologies to the research and information publishing process over the last decade has increased the volume of information available for analysis and the speed at which it is delivered. Often, opportunities to take advantage investment opportunities based on such information, may exist for only a short time. Furthermore, the opportunity to act on information may not be concurrent with the arrival of the information itself. It is critical that investment professionals be able to monitor the numerous sources of information, discern pertinent information from irrelevant information, analyze it as quickly as possible and base decisions on the information as it arrives. Investment professionals must therefore be able analyze, in short periods of opportunity, historic information that is often difficult and time-consuming to recall or retrieve manually.
In addition to being able to understand information relating to a primary investment of interest—e.g. information relating to a specific company or industry—an effective investment professional must also immediately understand and appreciate so-called “derivative influences.” Examples of derivative influences might include information about a company's industry, a competitor, a supplier, a geographic region, or any subject that is somehow “related” to a primary investment. However, expanding the universe of relevant information to include these derivative influences often exponentially increases the volume of information an investment professional must review. As a result, investment professionals also expend an increasing portion of their research efforts discovering and exploring the derivative influences on investments. As the breadth of derivative influences increases, the rate at which a single investment professional can retain and recall the relationships among various research sources falls behind the rate the research information is produced and delivered. Further complicating the process, when an investment professional receives information pertaining to a particular investment, there may be numerous other investments that are indirectly affected by the information. This universe of affected entities in which one can invest is constantly changing, as companies are bought and sold, enter new markets, and forge new partnerships.
The same performance pressures apply to an investment firm as a whole. To be effective, all members of the firm want to share information in real time, and allow individuals to rapidly sort and distribute the massive amounts of information available. At the same time, the fundamental research basis of a firm's investment decisions are coming under greater scrutiny, and heightening the need for a clear research audit trail.
Therefore, to be effective, an investment professional must become increasingly productive with respect to the receipt, review, and recording of information such that he can adequately support the investments made by the firm.